A marquee matchup between elite teams lifted Thursday Night Football to its largest audience in three years.
Packers-Cardinals averaged an 11.2 rating and 20.26 million viewers on the latest NFL Thursday Night Football simulcast on FOX and NFL Network (20.4M across all platforms), the largest audience for the TNF package since 2018 (Saints-Cowboys: 21.40M) and the sixth-largest audience in its 15-year history (includes Saturday and holiday games).
Outside of Saints-Vikings on Christmas Day last year (20.10M), it was the first TNF game to surpass even the 18 million viewer mark since 2018.
The game delivered the eighth-highest rating and viewership of the season (pending Sunday’s results), an unusually-high rank for a TNF game at this point of the season. At the same point last season, the top TNF game ranked 20th.
Green Bay’s narrow win increased 60% in ratings and 73% in viewership from Falcons-Panthers last year (7.0, 11.68M) and 35% and 50% respectively from 2019 (Washington-Minnesota: 8.3, 13.48M).
The blockbuster numbers would ordinarily have been reported Friday if not for a Nielsen delay.
While the NFL’s advantage over Major League Baseball is hardly news at this point, it is worth noting that TNF nearly doubled the World Series audience on FOX the two nights before (10.81M for Game 1 and 10.28M for Game 3) and the night after (11.23M for Game 3).
Thursday Night Football simulcasts are now averaging 15.8 million viewers across all platforms, up 24% from the same point last year (12.7M). Keep in mind last year’s average includes a game that was postponed from Thursday night to Monday afternoon.
Largest audience in Thursday Night Football history
* The NFL Kickoff Game and Thanksgiving night game are part of NBC’s Sunday Night Football package and thus not included on this list.
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 11.1, network PR]
